Clean and Collegiate

Technically, it is. Clean your room when it's dirty. That goes for your bedroom as a child, the terrible, windowless studio you crashed in at the age of 22, the duplex you rented at 25 and the home you mortgaged at 35. If it's dirty, clean it.

But when in college, these simple, little life rules have a way of growing complicated. Not because they're somehow harder to complete, mind you, but because you, by virtue of being a college student, become a bizarre combination of suffocatingly lazy and constantly busy. Perhaps you spent the morning sleeping instead of throwing away last night's after-partying 2 a.m. impulse pizza. Upon getting up, you had to fight through a hangover to make it to five hours of lectures, followed by a cram session for tomorrow's test you haven't yet studied for, followed by Ultimate Frisbee, followed by more partying and more impulse pizza. Which will not be cleaned up tomorrow, because you have that test, right?

All the crusty boxes of pizza are piling up, along with the pilfered orange juices from the cafeteria and the sweaty workout clothes that don't have time to be washed after your intramural softball game and before the party that follows it. And have you ever taken those sheets on your standard-issue twin bed down to the laundry room? Of course not. Who has that many quarters?

But before you just let yourself drown in takeout containers and dirty socks, let's see how often you need to clean up after yourself before you're really in trouble.